Quick Q and A with Jeffrey Foucault
 by Kathy S-B  ·  2 October 2008

Jeffrey Foucault took a few moments out of his busy life to answer a few questions for us. Be sure to dash on over to his website and find out more about this fantastic singer-songwriter! Here’s a video of Jeffrey playing a stellar tune, “One for Sorrow.”

Tell us about your new CD that is a tribute album of sorts to the music of John Prine. What is it about John Prine that resonates with you?

It’s called ‘Shoot the Moon Right Between the Eyes – A Collection of the Songs of John Prine.’ I recorded the basic tracks alone in an old bank building — in an old office trimmed out all in dark wood with a real high ceiling — and then added backing parts by various friends and collaborators (including Mark Erelli, whom I’ll be playing with on Friday). It explores some of the darker and more complex songs in Prine’s catalog, songs I’ve loved for a long time and never heard anyone else play.

I learned to play the guitar by dropping the needle over and over on John Prine’s first record when I was about 17, and what I still find resonant about his writing is his honesty and simplicity, and the way he writes lines no one else would ever come up with, and yet everyone knows what he’s talking about. No mean feat that.

Your song “Money Blues” was used as the opening song for the documentary “Class C,” which is a film about rural Montana and a girl’s basketball team. How did the producer of the film connect your music to the film?

I guess he heard me play years ago when I swung through Montana on a tour, and he’d kept up with my records. The movie deals in large part with a disappearing way of life, and the economic stresses that rural places all over are faced with. That song (Money Blues) is just a funny sweet little tune about being broke and not giving a shit — both fairly perpetual conditions for me — and I think they liked the sentiment. It’s a really beautiful movie and I was proud to be associated with it.

And your song “Stripping Cane” was recently used in a BBC documentary about the investigation of the Allied D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach in Normandy in June of 1944. Do you get any feedback from people who get turned onto your music through these various avenues?

I do find some fans through those things I suppose, or at least I hope I do. I don’t think about song placements too much. Most of my interest is still in writing and playing, and what happens to a song after you’ve made a record and moved on, while fascinating, feels pretty far removed from the main concern. That said, they used that song — which is about love and how people are built with both good and bad in them — over footage of the graves of soldiers at the end of the film, and I was moved to find some new meaning in the song in another context.

What was it like to play in a song circle with Chris Smither and Darrell Scott at the legendary Newport Folk Festival?

It was a lot of fun. Nice guys both of them. I’ve traveled around the world with Chris and we’re old pals. I think I opened about 60 shows for him one year. Darrel I’d never met, but I liked his playing a lot.

Mark Erellli tells us that you and he are doing a few shows as part of the Sleep Deprivation Tour 2008. What’s life like with the new one in the house?

If by new one you mean my daughter, life is just grand.